


Character study-Thomas

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Thomas thinks about his relationship with James while in Bethlam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5731042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pathos and logos, he believed, were the two great dualities of the world. They also relied on each other to work together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Character study-Thomas

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something not exactly from Thomas's point of view, but more of how he thinks and how that influences how he saw James. This was the result. Oh, and I'm a firm believer that his suicide was to spite his father.

He tried to read James like a book. It was often delightful when he could peel back a layer of the hard, external features to reveal something softer hidden underneath. James would resist him at first but only at first. Thomas would study him, memorizing a look or a gesture like so many words that formed phrases, until he knew when he was close to something the other man felt strongly about.

He re-read James over and over until he was memorized.

Pathos and logos, he believed, were the two great dualities of the world. They also relied on each other to work together. James was logos, of course: order and propriety and structure before all else. Thomas did his best to wedge in that element’s less coarser twin into their relationship: randomness and compassion and even chaos.

Chaos.

James had called him chaotic once. He supposed it was true. The chaotic way he had expressed his feelings for the first time, the chaotic way he had pressed after James, how he had shamelessly kept him overnight in his house, showing him all about pathos.

Though James’s binding was much the same, the pages inside had been greatly changed. He allowed himself a glimmer of pride at that, that it was he who had broken down and reassembled this stoic, logistic officer of the navy whose sea-green eyes sunk into his soul. Yes, he had a talent about him when it came to speeches, but what he had used to wrap James around his finger with was not, in the end, his words. It was love.

Pathos. Chaos. Damn the Greeks.

Here inside his dank cell the two words no longer held their own meanings. They blurred and merged together like all of his days alone here. He had no need of either pathos or chaos here, thank you very much.

Nothing was left to him but his mind and to think. Logos. Bare. Stripped. Deprived. 

He could think of only one thing, one person and he pretended that thoughts of James would indeed drive him to madness. Ah, there it was, the crux.

And he knew how the Catholics hated suicides. His father was Catholic. 

Logos, pathos and chaos. Nevermind ethos. If James were here he would understand. It was all logical, after all.


End file.
